Patrice Caitlin

Hi again, Finally up to date now! We arrived here last night and are staying in a lovely little hotel (Hotel St Thomas) quite near the centre of town. Have a nice breakfast included each morning - most places have had similar and we have been able to eat our normal cereal and piece of toast, then I make a ham & cheese bread roll or sandwich for us to take for lunch as cold meats and cheese are usually provided as well. Today we went on a 2.5 hr guided bus tour of Copenhagen - very good with a live guide for a change rather than a recorded commentary in multiple languages which don't always work very well! Stopped a couple of times to see special sights like the changing of the guards outside the ... read more

Merry Christmas to everyone, We arrived in Stockholm on Saturday afternoon (24 Dec) and are staying in a recently refurbished hostel - quite nice! Set up our small Christmas decorations bought ín Finland and set out on a sightseeing tour of Stockholm, then travelled around by T-bana (underground suburban train). Many of the T-bana stations are decorated as modern works of art quite often around a theme. Caitlin was excited to see one station all decked out in the colours of the Italian flag (red, green, & white) with many Italian style statues and carvings on display. We were a bit disappointed to find that many of the attractions in Stockholm were closed from 24 - 25 December as these are Public Holidays for Christmas here. However, we bought ourselves a lovely chicken and roast vegetable ... read more

Hi again, We were very excited to see snow lying on the ground everywhere when we arrived in Helsinki and even more in Rovaniemi. We went for a walk through the centre of town - a pedestrian only street decorated with an enormous Christmas tree and some absolutely gigantic snowmen (easily 10 m tall)! There are also a lot of Christmas stalls in this area selling local handicrafts such as woolly gloves, socks & hats, reindeer skins, traditional Christmas decorations, reindeer antlers, etc. as well as local foods - which we didn't try. For dínner, we decided to visit the northernmost MCDonald's in Europe - very interesting ordering Happy Meals from a Finnish menu. They seem to have different combinations to ours. Picked up a couple of complimentary postcards and Caitlin and the many other children ... read more

Hi all, I haven't had access to internet for a while so will catch up now with some backdated entries. We arrived at Heathrow Airport at 7:30am on Tuesday 20 December to check in for our 10:20am flight to Finland via Stockholm. Heathrow was badly fogged in, so at about 8:30am they asked everyone to go upstairs to a departure lounge and wait for the announcement to check in. We went back to the check in desk at 12 noon even though there had been no announcement only to find that our flight was full! Apparently many people had ignored the request to wait and they had actually been checking these people in on the flight. Profuse apologies did not really help me feel any better as we had to stand in another line for about ... read more

Hi all, We have been at Ambleside at the northern end of Lake Windermere in the gorgeous Lakes District of England since Friday and we leave tomorrow (Monday) morning. We have had a very relaxing time here - travelling up and down the length of the lake by ferry on a 2 day pass and visited The World of Beatrix Potter at Bowness which is half way down the lake(saw wonderful exhibition of all of her much loved characters - Caitlin's favourites were Jemima Puddleduck, the 2 naughty mice, and Peter Rabbit, of course). Today we caught a bus to the nearby village of Keswick which is the home of Derwent lead and coloured pencils, so we visited the Pencil Museum and learned how to paint with water-colour pencils. We also visited a Motor Museum - ... read more

Hi all, We have been in Inverness since last night - well about 3:30 pm yesterday, which is actually after sunset, so technically it's night! Our accomodation here is not quite as nice as in Edinburgh. We have a private twin room, but have to share a bathroom (next door) with a few other rooms, but haven't had to wait to use it yet. In Edinburgh, we stayed in a newly refurbished hostel, so all the fittings were almost brand new and our private triple room had an ensuite bathroom and a little table and chairs to sit at. We wanted to go to the Inverness Museum and Art Gallery today as it was raining lightly but steadily in the morning and looked as though it would continue all day (it did!). When we arrived there ... read more

Hi all, We have now finished our wonderful 6 days with Sue, Wayne and Tom Rogers in Hounslow. Apparently we were in the middle of a mini tornado when we were waiting outside Buckingham Palace for the Changing of the Guard at about 10:45 am on Thursday morning! We certainly had quite a bit of wind and rain and a little (small) hail but was able to walk along the street with sheltering under our umbrella (held in front of us)! We were very surprised to see the extreme damage done to buildings on the news that night! Apart from that the weather has been pretty fine - no snow so far! I think we'll have to wait until Finland for that! We have now started our train travel around the United Kingdom - yesterday on ... read more

Hi all, Sorry we haven't added an entry for a few days. Have been busy catching up with Sue and her family and sightseeing in London. So far, we have travelled around London on a Hop-on-hop-off bus tour and a Hop-on-hop-off River Thames boat cruise, visited the Tower of London, played in the Princess Diana Memorial Playground in Kensington Gardens - themed on Peter Pan with a large pirate ship, Indian village, etc. Caitlin definitely wants to visit this again! It's taking Caitlin a little wile to adapt to having to stay really close to me and is not backward at making it very clear to everyone if she is not happy about anything - like standing up all the way into central London on the tube! She got a result though as someone offered her ... read more

Hi everyone, We have arrived in Amsterdam via Singapore. Had good flights and Caitlin travelled well, keeping herself busy with activity books, eating and sleeping. Had a few hours relaxing at the swimming pool at Singapore Airport. Here is some of what Cailtin has been writing in her journal: I am on the plane. I am watching Hi-5. I had a an icecream and I had lunch. I am in Singapore. My mummy is going to have a massage. I am going to have a swim. I like it here. It is quiet and peaceful. My mummy thinks we're going to miss the plane. This is a beautiful song that is the music the birds are singing. I am in Amsterdam. I flew on KLM. I am going to fly in a KLM to London. My ... read more

Hi everyone, Caitlin and I are nearly ready to set off on our overseas adventure and I thought this would be a good way of keeping in touch with you all. Every time we make an entry you should get an email with a link to the new entry in the blog. We will be leaving Brisbane at 9:45am on Saturday 2 December on Singapore Airlines Flight SQ 256, stopping in Singapore, then Amsterdam and finally arriving in London at 9:00am (local time) on Sunday 3 December (that's 7:00pm in Brisbane). On the map you can see where we will be travelling. Hope this works and cheers for now, Patrice & Caitlin... read more